Sports

Hot Topics:

Get away from it all on Molokai

By Peter Delevett, San Jose Mercury News

Posted:
09/20/2013 08:57:28 AM MDT

Updated:
09/20/2013 06:10:53 PM MDT

Two hundred sixty square miles. Seven thousand people. No stoplights.

Those are the basics for Molokai, Hawaii's fifth-largest island -- and one of its least developed. While neighboring Lanai, recently bought by software mogul Larry Ellison, has been buzzing with construction, Molokai's biggest resort shut its doors five years ago after opposition to its plans for a luxury subdivision.

So when my wife and I -- frequent visitors to Oahu, Maui, Kauai and the Big Island of Hawaii -- made plans to return to the Aloha State with our 5-year-old, we opted for the adventure of the unspoiled and unknown.

We got more adventure than we bargained for, in good ways and bad.

According to the Hawaii Tourism Authority, fewer than 54,000 vacationers visited Molokai last year; four times that many went to Maui last month.

The absence of Waikiki-like comforts is part of why National Geographic Traveler a few years back rated Molokai one of the best islands in the world. "It seems," the magazine wrote, "like old Hawaii."

And even though the 2008 resort closure also shuttered several restaurants and the island's sole movie theater, Molokai is hardly devoid of things to do. It still boasts a small coffee plantation, a macadamia nut farm, beaches and valleys ... plenty to keep a family entertained, I reckoned.

Advertisement

As our turboprop from nearby Honolulu descended over Molokai, the lack of development was striking. "This place looks like it must have when Captain Cook showed up," I told my wife as we drove the short distance to the western coast. There were no buildings above two stories; in fact, the tallest things we saw on the island were the hundreds of Norfolk pines that were first brought here in the 19th century.

Kaunakakai
The biggest town on the island is tiny, though it does boast Molokai's lone hotel and gas station and most of its restaurants. There's a weekend farmers market and a hula festival in May; one legend holds that hula was invented on Molokai.

Kapuaiwa Coconut Grove
Just west of Kaunakakai, it's said to have been planted in the 19th century by King Kamehameha V. We'd planned to picnic there, but an elder at the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall across the street warned us about falling coconuts; to be on the safe side, we ate at adjacent Kiowea Beach Park.

Kumu Farms
A working organic farm where you can find fresh papayas, bananas and more. On Hua Ai Road just south of the airport.

Palau'au State Park
Twenty minutes north of the island's tiny airport. It's possible to take a mule train down to the former Kalaupapa leper colony; Gloria Marks, a Hansen's disease patient herself, runs Damien Tours, which can sponsor visitors.
808-567-6171

Purdy's Natural Macadamia Nuts
Since 1980, Tuddie and Kammy Purdy have been welcoming visitors to their five-acre mac nut farm in the Ho'olehua district. Closed most days by 3:30.
808-567-6601

(-- Peter Delevett, Staff)

We stopped for groceries in Maunaloa, which had more or less been the company town before Molokai Ranch, the island's biggest landowner, took its resorts and went home. Many townsfolk now depend on welfare. Still, the hilltop view was breathtaking, the broad lava fields evoking a lusher Kona as they sloped toward the sea.

There were few other visitors to enjoy the view; most units at our timeshare complex looked unoccupied. Ours, though, was not, as I learned the next morning when my wife let out a scream and leapt onto the bed. "A mou-mou-mouse," she wailed, pointing to the couch.

I grabbed a broom and delivered an impromptu version of the hunting chant from "The Lion King," which our preschooler found hilarious; the vermin, however, slipped away. Storyteller, the graceful, aging hippie who's the property's manager, explained that the summer heat sometimes brings field mice indoors; she brought us a few glue traps and offered to let her cat roam the unit while we went out.

'TOO FEW PEOPLE'

We whiled away a few hours at Dixie Beach, named for a fishing sampan than ran aground in a 1916 storm. The bowl-shaped little cove is sheltered from the strong currents along other West End beaches; there's also ample shade.

After a swim and picnic, we headed back to Maunaloa and the Big Wind Kite Factory -- more of a shop, really, proffering handmade kites, Balinese gongs, delicate shell jewelry and books about Hawaiian history. Proprietor Jon Socher, a grizzled, Lear-like presence, came here from Los Angeles in 1976 and four years later, opened the kite shop because "we were out of money."

Today, three generations of his family live on the fish-shaped island, which was originally a haven for cattle, sugar cane and pineapple farming before a Singapore company in the 1980s took control of Molokai Ranch with hopes of building a tourism economy.

The Kalaupapa peninsula, seen from Palaau State Park; a mule train can provide a closer look. (Photo by Peter Delevett/Staff) (peter delevett/staff)

I asked Socher whether somebody couldn't revive the hotel properties -- a new management team at Molokai Ranch, in fact, has been talking about doing just that -- but he argued that too few people live on the island to support the infrastructure.

PROGRESS TUG-OF-WAR

One also has to think that Molokai's unofficial nickname of "Leprosy Island" hasn't helped the tourist trade. From 1866 to 1969, Hawaiian law banished thousands of people suffering from the disfiguring skin condition (properly known as Hansen's disease) to the remote Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai's north coast. Today, with the disease curable, Kalaupapa is a national park, though the state maintains a small army of staffers to care for the few longtime patients who have chosen to remain.

To Socher, though, Molokai Ranch deserves the blame for gutting the economy. He said the locals are eager to work, and he dismissed the hotel company's claims that opposition to the coastal subdivision forced it to pull up stakes.

Yet, as we drove around the island, I kept noticing hand-lettered signs assailing plans to privatize beaches or build an undersea power cable to Oahu. And island environmentalists rejoiced earlier this year when Molokai Ranch spiked a wind farm that a San Francisco company wanted to build. In the tug-of-war between preservation and progress that every community must wage, the people of Molokai seem to have chosen their side.

BACK TO THE LAND

The island's hotel woes also predate the 2008 Molokai Ranch shutdown. Seven years earlier, the 140-room Kaluakoi Hotel and Golf Course was closed by Japanese owners who'd taken over from Sheraton. The abandoned property sits not far from the timeshare we'd rented, and after leaving Socher's shop we joined the locals gathered at the beach there to watch the sun set over Oahu.

Lovely as the moment was, the ghost hotel was creepy -- like visiting the set of a zombie movie. Still, as we strolled home for dinner, a large banyan tree was alive with the songs of hundreds of birds. Molokai, it struck me, is a place one comes to fish or hunt, hike or paddle -- mai tai bars not included. "I could see myself living here," I thought. "Buy a Jeep or a pickup truck. Back to the land."

Instead, two hours later I was screaming obscenities at a thumb-sized rodent that was doing its best Butch and Sundance in the pots-and-pans cupboard.

It turned out the mouse we'd seen in the morning had brought half a dozen friends along. My wife is no wuss -- as a kid, she camped solo in the Everglades -- but this was too much. "We're not staying here," she informed me from her barricade in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, after a mostly sleepless night, we discovered there were no other rooms at our timeshare resort -- nor at the island's lone hotel. So it was back to Oahu earlier than planned.

Our flight didn't leave until afternoon, so we decided to see as much of Molokai as we could -- starting with nearby Papohaku Beach. My wife and I grew up on the Florida Panhandle and have traveled to some of the world's most beautiful beaches, from Thailand to Australia to the Caribbean. Papohaku's three-mile strand of white stacks up against any of them, especially when you have it all to yourself.

Then it was off to the central town of Kualapu'u and the coffee plantation. Java was first planted here in the 1980s, and at its peak, the Coffees of Hawaii operation covered some 600 acres. When the island's economy began to sputter, a Stockton developer and a group of coffee growers from Manteca took over and are credited with keeping the company alive, but today the plantation is less than half its former size.

And while it's possible to buy bulk beans and quaff a cup at the adjacent coffee shop, we were disappointed to learn the company no longer offers tours of its grounds or roastery. So, with time still to burn before heading back to the airport, we plowed farther northward to Palau'au State Park, atop a 1,600-foot peak.

EARTHY, EARNEST LOCALS

A short stroll through koa and ironwood trees leads to the Kalaupapa overlook, the tiny community wedged between soaring cliffs and tousled sea. A friend who's been to the former leper prison calls it one of the most profoundly sad places he's ever been, but from that distant height it looked lovely.

Although our hoped-for week of quiet had become anything but, I'm glad we took the chance on Molokai. I think of the earthy, earnest locals we'd met, the nighttime canopy of stars, unsullied by city lights. And I can imagine going back someday, to fish and swim and get away from it all.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.